Manual deployment of our story generation web application was slow, repetitive, and prone to errors. Each time the code or model integration changed, we had to manually upload files to the server, which often led to inconsistencies and version mismatches. This slowed down our development process, especially with multiple team members collaborating.

To solve this, we implemented a lightweight CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Deployment) pipeline using GitHub. With this setup, any code pushed from our local environment (e.g., through VS Code) is automatically deployed to our EC2-hosted Flask backend. This ensures our latest changes—like API integration with Hugging Face or frontend updates—are reflected instantly on the live application without manual intervention.

• Defined the project scope and identified deployment-related inefficiencies in our story generation web application.
  
  

• Initialized a Git repository locally for both the Flask backend and the frontend code.
  
  

• Created a new GitHub repository and pushed the initial codebase from VS Code.
  
  

• Connected the GitHub repository to the EC2 instance using SSH and pull scripts to enable automatic updates.
  
  

• Verified that every code push to GitHub correctly reflects on the live story generation application.
  
  

This phase helped me understand the foundational role of GitHub in modern DevOps workflows. I learned that version control is not just about tracking code but also enables automation and smooth collaboration. By integrating GitHub early in our story generation project, we made team collaboration more efficient and laid the groundwork for CI/CD. I also recognized the importance of maintaining a clean and consistent repository structure, which is crucial for reliable deployments.